Once Upon a Time star Jennifer Morrison stopped by to chat with Parade about her favorite fairytales, meeting Michael Jordan when she was a child model, being bummed that she wasn’t the mom on How I Met Your Mother, and more.

On the third season of Once Upon a Time.“At the end of season two, Henry was kidnapped into Neverland, and so we start season three with all of the forces uniting to try and go get him. Regina, Mary Margaret, David, Hook, Emma and Gold all come together. Now, we’re up against Peter Pan, who is the villain of all villains in our world and the Lost Boys who he’s trained to be very dangerous.”

On her favorite thing about playing Emma Swan.“I’ve always loved Emma, from the second I read the pilot script. She’s a full spectrum of emotions. She’s incredibly strong and brave and courageous and then she’s also incredibly vulnerable and weak and needy, so it’s nice as an actor to get to play that full spectrum of emotions in one character.”

On what life is like behind the scenes on the show.“It’s great! We really enjoy work because so many of us are really close friends. We’re all removed from our lives because we’ve moved up to Canada to do this so it has a little bit of a summer camp-feel.”

On her favorite fairytale characters.“It would be hard for me to pick a favorite. I was definitely excited that they brought on the Little Mermaid this season, we haven’t seen her yet, but JoAnna Garcia, who is a really good friend of mine, was cast to play her.”

On her favorite fairytale growing up.“Growing up, my favorite fairytale was a tie between Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. I was really into both of them.”

On growing up in Chicago.“I grew up in Arlington Heights, which is a northwest suburb of Chicago. I did end up going into the city quite a bit as I got older because I started acting and doing commercials. I didn’t spend much time in the city until I was in college and then I was a starving student, so I have really no relationship with the finer things in Chicago the way I would like to!”

On her early acting ambitions.“I don’t know why, but I did always know I wanted to be an actor. Every thought that I ever had, every memory I have, I thought of myself as an actor. When I was in kindergarten, my moms says I came home and said, ‘Well, I’m an actor. Why am I not in a play?’ So they were like, ‘Well, I guess we’ll help you find a play!’ They were very supportive and encouraging. They basically said as long as you do well with your schoolwork you can do this for fun, so it started out as something I did as a hobby and then turned into real life.”

On her 1992 Sports Illustrated for Kids cover with Michael Jordan.“When I did the cover in 1992, I was a kid, but we loved the Bulls. That was the peak of their being incredible and Michael Jordan leading that team to all those championships, so we were definitely invested in the Bulls, so I was definitely very excited to get to meet him. I didn’t really have the foresight to figure out how to have a great encounter with him, I just basically said, ‘Hi! Do you play basketball year-round? And he said, ‘No, I golf sometimes,’ and that was about it! And then we took the pictures, and I went home and was just excited I got to meet Michael Jordan!”

On her favorite House memories.“I don’t know how to pick a favorite memory from six years, but it was incredible working on House. I was very lucky to be part of such an incredible ensemble of actors. The whole show as an experience was incredible, and I definitely have moments of looking back on it and thinking I kind of miss Cameron. I spent more hours of the day being her than me, so it feels like an old friend that I hadn’t seen in awhile.”

On her role as Zoey on How I Met Your Mother.“I kind of was bummed that I wasn’t the mother on How I Met Your Mother! I’ve always loved that show. I was a fan from the beginning, so I was just excited to be a part of it and excited that I got to have such a long arc. It’s such a wonderful work environment, it was by far my favorite thing I’ve worked on in television in terms of the group of people and the crew and the hours. I would have loved to have been the mother, but I kind of knew going into it that I didn’t fit all the little pieces that they had set up. I didn’t have the yellow umbrella and all that stuff, so I knew I wasn’t the mom. But I met the girl though who is the mom and she’s so sweet. She’s such a lovely person, so I thought, ‘Well there you go! He got a good wife!’”